The_Innovators_Dilemma__Clayton

CHAPTER THREE
Disruptive Technological
Change in the Mechanical
Excavator Industry
Excavators and their steam shovel predecessors are huge pieces of capital equipment sold to excavation
contractors. While few observers consider this a fast-moving, technologically dynamic industry, it has
points in common with the disk drive industry: Over its history, leading firms have successfully
adopted a series of sustaining innovations, both incremental and radical, in components and
architecture, but almost the entire population of mechanical shovel manufacturers was wiped out by a
disruptive technology—hydraulics—that the leaders’ customers and their economic structure had
caused them initially to ignore. Although in disk drives such invasions of established markets occurred
within a few years of the initial emergence of each disruptive technology, the triumph of hydraulic
excavators took twenty years. Yet the disruptive invasion proved just as decisive and difficult to
counter in excavators as those in the disk drive industry. 1
LEADERSHIP IN SUSTAINING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
From William Smith Otis’ invention of the steam shovel in 1837 through the early 1920s, mechanical
earthmoving equipment was steam-powered. A central boiler sent steam through pipes to small steam
engines at each point where power was required in the machine. Through a system of pulleys, drums,
and cables, these engines manipulated frontward-scooping buckets, as illustrated in Figure 3.1.
Originally, steam shovels were mounted on rails and used to excavate earth in railway and canal
construction. American excavator manufacturers were tightly clustered in northern Ohio and near
Milwaukee.
Figure 3.1 Cable-Actuated Mechanical Shovel Manufactured by Osgood General
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